


60

by amandaskankovich



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:03:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2492114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amandaskankovich/pseuds/amandaskankovich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the day Ian decides to have himself committed Fiona decides to make Mickey pancakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	60

**Author's Note:**

> Potential season 5 spoilers

"You’re just a kid."  
The words come out without any real thought behind them and it’s only after (to her credit it’s seconds after) when he just gives her this look (head tilted slightly, eyebrow raised, small smirk) that says, “Who the fuck are you talking to?” That she realizes what a stupid thing it had been to say.  
And today of all days.  
Really fucking stupid thing to say.  
But maybe it’s exhaustion or just something deeper and sadder he doesn’t call her out on it. He’s 19 yeah. But he’s about as much a kid as she had been at that age. As Lip is. As Ian will be.  
Ian.  
So not a kid at all.  
The man Mickey Milkovich sits at her kitchen table and just stares at the cigarette burning in his hand and she realizes this is probably the first time ever she’s been alone in a room with him.  
So what can she do suddenly very aware of her hands and how grateful she should be.  
Because she should be shouldn’t she? So very grateful.  
But gratitude feels unfamiliar and overwhelming.  
And what she should really be doing is saying sorry.  
Because she fucked up. She passed the buck.  
She’s going to say, “I’m so fucking sorry.”  
But what comes out instead is, “Hungry?”  
He looks at her.  
"I could make ya something. There might be leftovers from the diner if the kids didn’t get to them yet."  
"I’m not…" He starts.  
But she’s already getting up, “I could make pancakes?”  
He doesn’t have time to respond she’s already pulling a half empty box of bisquik out of a cabinet, “You like pancakes right?”  
And it’s in the air.  
How desperately she wants him to not leave. Not without her giving him something when she owed him so much.  
And how much he was dreading going home to a bed that he knew instinctively would feel way too big now.  
"Yeah," he says, "I do."  
60 days is not that long she thinks about saying. But she can see the number as she stirs. Large and looming. SIXTY.  
It is that long.  
It is exactly that fucking long.  
And she’s just the sister, right?  
She’s never needed Ian to sleep.  
Even when she should have. When he was gone all those weeks. And yeah she hadn’t slept at all that first night when no one knew what the fuck had happened. But then they’d gotten that first text and just knowing he was alive had been enough. And she’d told herself Ian could handle himself. He just needs space. Ian’s never been the one she had to worry about. Independent, resourceful, responsible Ian. He’ll come home when he’s ready.  
And she’d been right.  
Except for how she’d been completely fucking wrong.  
She pours the batter into a frying pan.  
She’d just assumed he’d had some kind of plan.  
Ian always did.  
And that had been true (it had just been a bad one).  
He’d needed her there.  
She turns the first pancake over.  
He’d needed her there to be his sister and tell him it was a bad fucking plan.  
And where had she been? Where the fuck had she been?  
She flips the second pancake.  
She looks at Mickey sitting at her table and saying not a thing.  
He looks over at her and she offers a nervous smile she hopes doesn’t reveal her nervousness.  
"Want me to get some plates?" He asks after a second.  
"Uh yeah," she says forcing her voice to sound upbeat, "that would be great."  
He walks over to the cabinet and pulls out two plates.  
"You can stop smiling," He tells her.  
She looks away from him and back at her cooking. The pancakes are getting black around the edges.  
She stops smiling and takes a plate.  
*  
He doesn’t eat the way he did the last time he ate in her kitchen.  
She’d poured the syrup on for both of them.  
"Sorry I burnt them." She says.  
"It’s fine," he replies.  
She scratches the side of her face and pushes her own barely touched plate away from her.  
"Look I…I’ve gotta say something to you."  
"Oh yeah?" He says taking a weak bite of his increasingly soggy dinner, "What?"  
"I’m sorry for…calling you a kid and…saying what I said."  
"People have said way worse to me. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Even though I know that’s like your favorite thing to do."  
"Oh yeah," she says, "Who told you that?"  
He looks at her and the room is suddenly that much smaller.  
He’s a good looking kid (not a kid) she realizes.  
She’d never really noticed that before.  
But he cleans up nice and she feels herself for just a second looking at him and seeing what Ian probably sees.  
He’s a handsome boy.  
She bites her cheek then because she is not going to start crying.  
"Are you crying?" He asks.  
"Fuck," and all of a sudden she’s grabbing the roll of paper towels off the counter, "I’m not."  
"Fuck," he says, "I don’t…I’m not really good with…chicks crying in front of me."  
"I’m not fucking crying!" She responds.  
"Kind of looks like you are."  
She finishes dabbing at her face,”Please shut up and eat your fucking pancakes.”  
"Fine," he says taking a big and soggy forkful and shoving it in his mouth.  
She sits back down at the table with two beers and lets out a deep breath.  
"You done not crying?" He asks.  
She gives him a look and slides a bottle towards him.  
"Aren’t you supposed to not be doing that?" He says looking at the bottle in her hand.  
"I mean I don’t really give a fuck but isn’t that apart of your probation or something?"  
She looks at him.  
Gets up from the table.  
Walks over to the sink, opens the bottle and starts pouring it into the drain.  
"You could have just put it back in the fridge."  
She doesn’t look at him as she finishes pouring,”So my brother told you everything huh?”  
"Pretty much," he says as she turns around to see him taking a long sip from his bottle, "Except for the times he told me not a fucking thing at all."  
She grabs a glass and fills it with the remainder of a 2 liter of coke.  
She sits across from Mickey at the table.  
"So what did he say?" She asks.  
Mickey sniffs, “He said he thought everyone would be better off if he was someone else’s problem for awhile.”  
"What did you say?"  
He looks at her, “He’s not a fucking problem.”  
She looks at her coke and thinks of her mother, “I know.”  
She looks at him, “But I think…you probably need a break. Both of you.”  
He looks at her. “It’s been…it’s been exhausting right? For both of you.”  
He bites his lip and shakes his head and looks away from her.  
"I just mean…you’ve both been trying so hard to keep it together and….look sometimes you can try so hard and it still…just doesn’t work. So maybe if he’s there with people who deal with his kind of situation professionally and you…can just focus on your own shit for awhile…"  
His palm hits the table loud and echoing.  
"You don’t fucking know anything." He says to her.  
And she thinks: Yeah.  
That’s probably right.  
*  
She knows there’s more to this story.  
This whole fucked up situation.  
But she also knows he’s not going to tell it and it’s not really hers to hear.  
And she hasn’t really earned it.  
Going jogging with Ian a few mornings a week and she told herself he was doing better.  
She doesn’t get to ask him a fucking thing.  
*  
"We can go up there to visit him in a couple weeks." She says when he’s finally just decided to bite the bullet and call it a fucking night. Put an end to this eternal fucking day.  
"I’m gonna go. With the kids."  
She continues talking, “You can come with us.” Something occurs to her, “Bring Mandy.”  
"Maybe," he says showing visible discomfort, "I don’t…I don’t know if he’s gonna want me there."  
He looks at her, “I let it go on for way too long. I knew he wasn’t doing okay. Deep down I fucking knew it but I just…I wanted him to be okay.”  
He shrugs and smiles at her and it’s not a real smile.  
At all.  
"I fucked up the best thing in my life."  
"Nope," she says shaking her head reacting with instinct remembering Ian as she watched him sign the papers. Signing himself away.  
"I fucked it all up. I fucked up everything."  
"Nope," she’d said grabbing him, pulling him close.  
Being his sister for the first time in too many goddamn months.  
Mickey Milkovich is not used to being hugged by Fiona Gallagher. Fiona Gallagher is not used to hugging Mickey Milkovich.  
But she owes him so much and she can look at him and see what her brother sees.  
And he’s just a fucking kid. Like Ian is.  
And she can’t hug her brother right now.  
Her brother can’t hug either of them.  
60 days is a long fucking time.  
They’ve got to make do.  
And the pancakes had been shitty.


End file.
